Lil Wayne has said leaving school was his mother’s idea, and it always comes back to a gun in his backpack. “She saw me getting ready for school one day, and she saw me putting my gun in my backpack,” he said, describing the morning that ended his time in a regular classroom.

On Katie Couric’s ABC daytime show in September 2013, the rapper, born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., said leaving school was his mom’s idea. He was already platinum by then, with a solo album out, and still trying to go to regular public school in New Orleans.

One morning his mother, Jacida Carter, caught him getting ready and saw him slide a gun into his bag. When he asked whether she really wanted him to leave it at home, she thought about it and said she did. She had bought the gun for his protection.

A couple of minutes later she came back and settled it: no more school, he was getting a GED. He said he just answered, “OK.”

Couric put it to him that he’d been an honor student. His reply: “Oh, nothing less.” Asked if he regretted not finishing, he said “Not at all,” then told kids to stay in school and said his own children would.